


Echoes in the Storm

by canadasuperhero



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, characters to be added as they appear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23779873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canadasuperhero/pseuds/canadasuperhero
Summary: All planets have their own stories, their monsters, their ghosts. Perhaps it is the Force left over, twisting and untamed, perhaps it is something else. On Jedha-that-was, doorways were painted to keep the dead out as they screamed through the streets on dust and wind. Those that were caught out are never the same if they remained at all.Now where the dust of Jedha swirls through the stars, ships are going missing.
Kudos: 7





	Echoes in the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> This is being written with Dotan playing on repeat so if you want some atmosphere that's a good place to start. 
> 
> Much love to my friends who keep letting me explain in explicit detail the properties of Kyber crystal and the nuances of a calendar that has two year zeroes back to back.

_Now ask, "Where is the Force of Others?" and one answer becomes inevitable: the kind and cold moon of Jedha. For a thousand faiths see truth in Jedha's mysteries, no matter that their stories differ; no matter that not one history of the Temple of the Kyber can explain each brick in its foundation, or that our legends entwine and part in paradox._

_I ask you to believe that Jedha is a nexus for faith, life, and the Force of Others in all their forms. If the Force can be embodied in a vision or a living creature, why not a place? Or why not an idea? Why can pilgrimage not be Jedha, and Jedha not be the Force?_

_I ask you to believe this not because it is true, but because it is a beginning._

-Faith and the Force of Others from the archives  
of the Order of the Esoteric Pulsar -- Document #DN4624

* * *

“This is the _Arpeggio_. They were on an archeological expedition to Jedha to uncover and preserve what was left after the Imperial occupation and destruction of NiJeda.” Leia’s expression, washed blue and grey by the holographic ship floating in front of her, was gravely calm. Her knuckles, white along the edge of the projection table belied that. “They haven’t been heard from since entering the Jedha system.”

Luke leaned forward, eyes intent on the slowly rotating model. “That’s the fourth vessel missing, isn’t it?”

“The fourth reported maybe.” Metal clattered against the permacrete of the base floor as Han dropped his feet from their brace against the holoprojector, leaning forward himself. “I’ve been hearing some weird shit through the channels since we dealt with that mining operation in year one. Mostly superstitious Force drivel -- whispers and wind in ship passages, ships nearly shaking apart in hyperspace -- all dying down once they’re through that sector. Smugglers who’d been bragging about lucking into kyber loads never heard from again.”

“If this isn’t the first time we’re hearing about this, then why are we being brought in this late? If what Han is saying has reached the Counsel, I can see why they’d want someone Force-Sensitive but why so long? I’ve been back in Republic space for nearly a year now and I know there are a few sensitive individuals available.” Luke tossed a pointed look in his sister’s direction but wisely kept it at that.

Leia’s lips pursed, nearly as bloodless as her knuckles. “The New Republic has only been fully realized as an entity for the same duration -- we’ve had other critical situations to manage in the mean-time.”

“You mean it was only when Republic resources went missing that they cared enough.”

“I _meant_ exactly what I said, Han!”

“What you _said_ sounded a lot like diplomatic bullshit, Princess.”

“Polite sentences of more than three-syllable words does not mean ‘diplomatic’, you nerf-herder!”

“There ain’t nothing polite about you!”

Used to his companions devolving conversation style, Luke leaned between them uncaringly to adjust the holo to a map of the Terrabe sector and it’s overlaying hyperspace routes. “Do we know if these disturbances pick up over here or is it only when passing over NaJedha?”

Pulled back to the topic at hand, Han’s long fingers reach out to start inputting approximate incidents and their matching hyperspace coordinates. Slowly the dull blue of the space around NaJedha was spotted yellow until the route passing around the planet and its ruined moon glowed. Only a few of Han’s reports speckled further out and when Leia caught his eye, he raised a hand and see-sawed it back and forth with a grimace. 

With a nod, Luke reached forward to delete the outliers, replacing them instead with the four confirmed missing vessels. Jedha turned red and the twins echoed Han’s grimace. “Is it the Empire again? Taking out competition? Or feedback, maybe, that’s more obvious now that half the moon is missing and the dust has settled?”

“What would cause that sort of feedback in hyperspace, though?” Leia traced the route, her fingers hovering just above the holo.

“Well, we don’t really know a lot about kyber -- what research the Empire did for the Death Star was lost on Scarif and we know what they did with anything that smacked of the Order.” Luke curled slightly back in his chair, arms aligned with his crossed knees, black clothes emphasising the neatness of his posture. His tone held the cadance he’d picked up in his years away from them, when he fell into reciting his hard-won and horded knowledge. 

Han and Leia shared a look that was equally fond and exasperated. “Kyber resonates with the Force, sure, and it interacts with particles in a particularly scattered way unless it’s contained and focused but there aren't a lot of solid facts outside of that. It may show up on planets through extinction events or it may occur naturally throughout the system. Some scholars proposed that kyber actually reforms along its veins if left undisturbed. For all we know it’s the kyber itself causing the disturbances.”

“You think the kyber is rattling ships and making people crazy?” Han sounded doubtful but Luke was already shaking his head.

“It’s a theory, Han. We won’t know until we check it out.”

“What’s to stop us from becoming another bright light on this map, huh?”

“We’ll just have to trust in the Force, I suppose.” Immediately, Han and Leia grimaced at him, solidarity found once more in their distaste of Force-related prayer. Luke laughed, unbothered. “If not the Force, then your excellent piloting skills.”

“I’m not taking the _Falcon_ into that!”

Luke laughed again, leaned forward, and turned the holo off.

*

They took the Falcon. In the end, Han didn’t trust any other ship to get them in-and-out safely. If she were honest, Leia didn’t either -- the Republic ships she’d been offered were either massive cruisers, suited to rank but not to maneuverability, or actual junk heaps. Han’s junk heap was at least as quick as Han’s reflexes. Still, it was best to keep Han’s ego within the same solar system as they were, so she dropped her bags down inside the ramp and stated tartly. “Are you sure this rust bucket won’t shake apart the minute we hit Jedhan space?”

Chewie wailed from somewhere outside and Leia smothered her smile. Han’s voice followed, muffled and indignant. “Don’t agree with her! What does she know? We’ve got this.”

Their argument continued, alternating between Chewie’s mournful wails and Han’s increasingly nasal rejoinders. Her brother didn’t bother to muffle his own laughter as he joined her, throwing his duffle atop her bags and pushing them absently into an alcove with the side of his foot. “You would think he’d know by now you do that on purpose.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

He leaned down to buss her cheek. “No, of course. Silly of me.”

“Silly of you.” She affirmed firmly. She had missed this hard-won levity between the three of them. With Luke off chasing history and Jedi, and herself tied down to the jagged edges of reforming politics, they had only talked a handful of times in the past year and less in the year before that. She’d worried that her decision to quit training had led to some of the distance between them but besides the occasional pointed pot-shot, Luke had slotted back into their dynamic like he’d never left.

Her brother was staring at her now with a cocked head and a crooked, bemused smile -- she’d been staring at him securing their duffles for longer than she’d realized. Leia crooked a smile back at him and reached down to ruffle through his hair like Han did. “I’m glad you’re coming with us.”

“Well, Chewie did ask nicely.” He laughed when she used her hand in his hair to push him away with a scoff. He swayed but stayed upright. “But really, I’m glad to go. I’d always meant to go back, you know. There was so much history there around the Force. It just hadn’t felt right to intrude on their grief the first time.”

“It feels right now?”

Luke was already shaking his head earnestly. His hand crept up to press against his chest absently and Leia ruthlessly squashed the urge to mirror him. “Not right. Just … not avoidable.”

Definitely not avoidable; something was happening on Jedha and now that they’d acknowledged it, the call was stronger. Leia could pretend there was nothing in her insistence on taking this mission other than duty but she knew herself well enough to admit that the ache somewhere in her breastbone echoed the ache she felt for Alderaan. It demanded she moved forward. Regardless of her honesty to herself, she would never admit it to anyone else, not even Luke. 

Leia nudged him with her knee. “Come on, then. If we’re not avoiding this any longer we’d better go pull Han off the manifolds. He’s been cleaning them for half the morning now.”

*

The destruction of NiJedha had left ruin in its wake. When the Death Star fired its first blow on the galaxy, it sent shockwaves across the landscape, tore mesa to the ground and sent dust to clog the sky. Perhaps that might have been it; a terrible gaping crater opened once more on a moon that would recover as the dust settled and those few outlying encampments pulled together. But Jedha was a warren of caverns and tunnels stripped bare and NiJedha had sat tall at the very origin of its worth. When the city was destroyed the moon itself shattered along its veins of kyber and collapsed under its own weight.

What Jedha was after was a wound. The atmosphere itself seemed to be sucked into space leaving only storms and dust in its wake. Luke remembered that the locals who returned from NaJedha to help them fight back against the renewed Imperial presence had huddled close and painted white clay long their brows and hands as they mourned the storms.

He’d thought the mourning weird at the time since storms had flashed around them constantly; lightening mixing with the dust to create dangerous bursts of flame. The remnants of Jedha offered him a story for his doubts: on Jedha-that-was the sand and dust that made up everything would often race through the air like a living thing. People caught outside in the sandstorms went missing or were forever changed. It was only when the storms came and brought with them torrential rains that weighed down the crystalline sand that the people of Jedha could wash their doorways clear of paint and start the new year fresh, without worry or care. The rains were, if Luke had understood correctly, as much a part of Jedhan folklore and faith as the screaming dust storms had been, or as much as the Force was. A wounded Jedha, however, had no way to hold the water and instead those life-giving storms threw more dust in the sky and left Jedha in a mourning shroud.

Luke rolled over in his sprawl across the padded bench of the _Falcon’s_ lounge to idley watch Leia write reports. Did Jedha still have its shroud or had the six years that passed been long enough for what was left of the atmosphere -- and the storms with it -- to fade into space? Han held to that theory; all of this was just careless pilots unaware of a newly-formed asteroid field stretching through the old trade route. Luke himself didn’t think it was likely but there was no point in ruling out a mundane answer either.

“Hey kids, we’ve passed the first incident blip in the sector by a good while now so maybe hold on to something.” Han’s voice echoed back along the comms and Luke groaned but pulled himself upright. 

Leia looked up from her holopads and then over to the chrono as she started to pack up. “We cleared the rest of the Terrabe sector fast.”

“I think Han’s made some adjustments to how tight the calculations run a hyperspace route.”

“Well, if that isn’t a sure way for us to all die.”

“We’re on our way to investigate a mysterious ship graveyard over the ruined corpse of a moon.” He reached down and started helping Leia pack her mountain of paperwork into the appropriate cases. “Han’s obsession with setting run records is probably the least of our worries.”

Given their lives so far, Luke was pretty sure that was true regardless of where they were; he was just wise enough not to push their luck further than he already had, however. A few quiet moments of shuffling later he was proven right on both accounts. The _Falcon_ shuddered and seemed to pause, the feeling of stillness like waiting before it rattled again. The lounge around them filled with screaming and shuddering metal. Luke stumbled, his handful of files scattering across the floor as he grabbed at Leia to steady them both.

His sister slapped at his arm, already swinging herself out of her seat, careful to keep a hand twisted into the straps along the wall behind her. Together they started stumbling towards the cockpit. “You just had to say it didn’t you?”

Luke sighed, “We all make mistakes,” but there was no way Leia heard him over the noise of the Falcon’s alarms and the wind that screamed around them. Han’s voice crackled back on; he sounded as strained as the ship and Luke could barely make out Chewie’s acerbic wails.. “I’m calling it; we’re dropping out of hyperspace now.”

A small palm slapped against the nearest comm panel. “We’re secure and on our way. Where are we?”

“Three hours by regular space from NaJedha.” The comms crackled and filled with low moaning, cutting out when Han spoke again. “Brace for four, three, two ….one.”

Usually smooth, this time the _Falcon’s_ drop from hyperspace was heralded by a death rattle; beside Luke’s head an internal coolant pipe cracked, huffing out a mist that frosted the metal around it.. 

The shrieking stopped. 

The ship clunked and then fell silent. 

Neither Luke nor Leia bothered to share a look or a moment to steady themselves, instead loping down the corridors towards the cockpit. When they arrived the first thing Luke noticed in the cramped space was Han sprawled in his seat, head tilted back and eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling. Leia slid past Luke to run her hands along the sides and back of his head and down his neck almost frantically. Her voice, however, was firm. “Han?” 

With that off his list of immediate concerns, Luke wriggled between Leia and the co-pilot’s chair to check in on the dashboard and the quietly whining co-pilot himself. “Chewie? Hey, Chewie, are we still moving, big guy? Leia, is Han alright?”

“I don’t know. Come on, Fly-boy, what’s the matter?” Luke glanced back at them, half-curled around Chewie’s seat to reach some of the toggles above him.

One of Han’s hands came up and cupped Leia’s jaw softly before pushing, turning her face towards the viewport. Leia’s nose scrunched up, her head titling slightly, and Luke could see her open her mouth -- to say what, he didn’t know because instead her face went slack, her hands drifting up to cradling Han’s against her face. “Oh.”

“Oh? What ‘oh’?” Luke flipped the switch, restarting the _Falcon’s_ engine sequence, before squirming around, stooping to see the viewport himself. At first he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Lights streaked by them; for a moment Luke wondered if they’d jumped back to hyperspace somehow and the stars were stretching around them once more. That couldn’t be it though, he knew, his fingers still curled around the toggle that kickstarted them from their dead-stop. The route of lights that on the holomap had been a sickly yellow was now highlighted a soft blue and in the way was Luke’s second confirmation of their stillness: NaJedha, shining and purple. Luke’s eyes drifted back along the streaming lights as they curled around the planet and there, rising behind it, small and dim, was Jedha.

Dim no longer, it seemed. The lights slowed and pulled, radial, like the arms of a small galaxy clustering towards the core of Jedha -- or where the core of Jedha had once been visible. Grey and glimmer swirled with rust-red now, obstructing where Luke was sure NiJedha had once been. Dust and steam and kyber pulsed through the space before them and it pulled at something behind Luke’s ribcage like a heartbeat.

For a moment, the twins were silent, mouths open, both leaning unconsciously forward as if to follow the flashes of crystalline dust that moved around and past the Falcon into distant Jedha.. Then Han let out a breath like a punch and the air seemed to rush back into the cockpit.. “Well. Fuck me.”

  
  



End file.
